http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
IT'S BACK TO SCHOOL for students, and in a lot of places that's too
bad.

If they're in classes at Brown, they can sign up for "Black Lavender:
A study of Black Gay and Lesbian Plays and Dramatic Construction in
the American Theatre.'' The course is described as "an
interdisciplinary approach to the study of plays that address the
identities and issues of black gay men and lesbians.''

In "The Bible and Horror'' at Georgetown University, once a redoubt
of rigorous academic training by Jesuits, the Bible is studied as "a
scary book that often reads more like horror than religious
literature.'' College students can sharpen their minds on what
religion and horror have in common.

My favorite selection is at Carnegie Mellon, called "Sex and Death.''
It addresses "whether we need to liberate death now that (maybe) we
have figured sex out.'' Awkward grammar and syntax aside, Herbert
Simon, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist who designed a core
curriculum for Carnegie Mellon almost 20 years ago, probably was not
thinking about death when he said: "We want to provide some common
topics of conversation besides sports, the weather and sex.'' Shall we
toast the new with a cocktail of embalming fluid?

There are lots more courses where these come from. Such examples are
culled from the annual survey conducted by the Young America's
Foundation in their current "Comedy and Tragedy: College Course
Descriptions and What They Tell us about Higher Education Today.''

How did this happen? Perhaps the politicizing of academic courses is
in a direct line of educational momentum that began in the progressive
theories of public school education as early as the turn of the 20th
century. In a wonderful new book, "Left Back: A Century of Failed
School Reforms,'' Diane Ravitch, a critical scholar of education who
served as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Education in
the Bush administration, argues that public schools suffered when
educators decided that social reform was more important than
disciplined academic teaching.

Ravitch focuses on the breakdown of traditionalism in public school
classrooms that caused academic standards to deteriorate in lower
schools, but it's not hard to see in her research a direct line of
anti-intellectualism in the lower grades that led to the fashionable
silliness at the university level as well.

Once John Dewey persuaded the educational powers in 1897 that the
school was the primary means of social reform, public schools fell
into the political arena that Miss Ravitch says "encouraged
ideologues of every stripe to try to impose their social, religious,
cultural, and political agendas on the schools.'' As a result
"educators forgot how to say 'no,' even to the loopier notion of what
schools were for.''

Academic standards declined first for poor immigrants and racial
minorities who were pushed into stratified and undemanding vocational
classes because they were thought incapable of college-prep courses.
By the 1960s, anti-intellectual and anti-academic theories that had
hurt the less fortunate re-emerged under the rubric of "relevance,''
and maimed the minds of several generations of children of the middle
and upper-classes. Learning techniques emphasized the importance of
personal experience and social adjustment over intellectual and
character development.

Representatives of high-tech companies recently testified before
Congress that America's young people are ill-prepared in science and
math. They are also ill-prepared for conceptual thinking that evolves
from demanding courses in history, literature and philosophy,
requiring well-thought out connections between the past and the
present, fostering an ability to distinguish between propaganda and
information. Writing a coherent sentence is difficult for the
graduates of our top schools, too -- as any editor can tell you.

This is all the more important as young men and women are teased away
from the rigors of learning in favor of television, the movies and the
Internet. They can get lots of "relevance'' without reading a book,
but only a good education provides the intellectual capabilities to
turn information into
knowledge.

09/05/00: Joe Lieberman as a 'Menorah Man' 08/31/00: Rising suns of the conventions 08/17/00: Changing icons: From Loretta Young to Hillary Clinton 08/14/00: The Creator returns to the public square 08/10/00: Bursting with pride, but caution too 08/07/00: Brains, beauty and beastly politics 08/03/00: A candidate with a superego 07/31/00: The sizzling Lynne Cheney 07/27/00: The party of the aging Playboys 07/24/00 Hillary drives the Jewish wagon into a ditch 07/20/00 Conservatives gone fishin' 07/17/00: Snoop Doggy Dogg was a founding father, wasn't he? 07/13/00: When a teenager doesn't need a prime minister 07/10/00: Abortion as cruel and unusual punishment 07/06/00: Surviving 'survivor' TV 07/03/00: Independence Day with Norman Rockwell 06/29/00: Here comes 'something old' 06/26/00: Waiting too long for the baby 06/22/00: Good teachers, curious students and oxymorons 06/19/00: Wanted: Some ants for Gore's pants 06/15/00: Like father, like daughter 06/12/00: Culture wars and conservative warriors 06/08/00: Return of the housewife 06/05/00: Hillary and Al -- playing against type 05/31/00: The sexual revolution confronts the SUV 05/25/00: Waiting for the movie 05/22/00: Pistol packin' mamas 05/18/00: Journalists and the 'new time' religion 05/15/00: There's nothing like a (military) dame 05/11/00: 'The Human Stain' on campus 05/09/00: We've come a long way, Betty Friedan 05/04/00: From George Washington to Mansa Masu 05/01/00: Gore's ruthless doublespeak 04/28/00: Doing it Castro's way 04/24/00: Women's studies beget narrow minds 04/17/00: The slippery slope of anti-Semitism 04/13/00: A villain larger than life 04/10/00: When mourning becomes an economic tragedy 04/03/00: The last permissible bigotry03/30/00: Seeking the political Oscar 03/23/00: The gaying of America 03/20/00: Pointy-eared quadrupeds on campus 03/16/00: The shocking art of the establishment 03/13/00: Sawdust on the campaign trail 03/10/00: Campaign rhetoric of manhood 03/06/00: The Amphetamine of the People 03/02/00: Elegy for Amadou 02/29/00: With only a million, what's a poor girl to do?02/24/00: The changing politics of change 02/16/00: Tip from Hillary: 'Let 'em eat eggs' 02/10/00: No seances with Eleanor 02/07/00: Campaigning like our founding fathers 02/03/00: When neo-Nazis have short memories 01/31/00: George W. -- 'Ladies man' and 'man's man'01/27/00: Dead white males and live white politicians 01/25/00: Smarting over presidential smarts 01/21/00: A post-modern song for `The Sopranos' 01/19/00: When personality is a long-distance plus 01/13/00: French lessons in amour --- and marriage 01/10/00: Reaching for the Big Golden Apple 01/07/00: Liddy Dole as the face of feminism 01/04/00: Hillary: From victim to victor12/30/99: 'Dream catchers' for the millennium 12/27/99: In search of a candidate with strength and eloquence 12/21/99: The president as First Lady12/16/99: Columbine with blurred hindsight 12/09/99: Homeless deserve discriminating attention12/07/99: Casual censors and deadly know-nothings 12/02/99: Why mom didn't make general: A reality tale 11/30/99: Potholes on the road to the Promised Land 11/25/99: A feast for the spirit and the stomach 11/23/99: Fathers need to say 'I (can) do' 11/18/99: Adventures of a conservative pundit 11/15/99: Traveling with Jefferson on the information highway11/11/99: Wanted: 'Foliage of forbiddinness' for the oval office 11/09/99: Eggs, art and rotten commerce 11/05/99: Al Gore, 'Alpha Male'. Bow wow. 11/01/99: Gay love10/28/99: Lose one Dole, lose two 10/26/99: Rebels with a violent cause 10/21/99: Reforming parents, reforming schools 10/19/99: The male mystique -- he shops10/13/99:The campaign of the Teletubbies10/08/99: Money is in the eye of the art dealer 10/01/99: Lincoln's 'Almost Chosen People' 09/29/99: Introducing Bill and Hillary Bickerson 09/27/99: Must we wait for the next massacre?09/24/99: Miss America meets Miss'd America09/21/99: Princeton's 'professor death'09/16/99: The Cisneros lesson09/13/99: No clemency for personal politics09/08/99: M-M-M is for manhood 08/30/99: Blocking the schoolhouse door 08/27/99: No kick from cocaine08/23/99: Movies don't kill people 08/19/99: A rude awakening 08/16/99: Dubyah and that 'language' thing 08/09/99: Chauvinist sows -- oink oink